Disposable skin incision devices have been produced and marketed for many years. In a majority of these skin incision devices, a trigger is pushed which causes a blade to project out of a slot in the housing and then to retract back into the housing. The skin incision device has a spring or a flexural member which upon triggering produces the force to project the blade out of the housing into the skin and retract the blade. A skin incision device having a spring is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,643,189 entitled "Apparatus for Implementing A Standardized Skin Incision" which issued to Mintz on Feb. 17, 1987, and is incorporated herein by reference.
In skin incision devices which use a spring, the spring must be tensioned or cocked in order to achieve the desired result. In assembling the skin incision device, the spring must be tensioned and then held in tension while the skin incision device is being assembled.
It would be desirable to assemble the spring in the skin incision device in a non-tension position and then tension the spring at a later time.